My Hand’s Kinda Heavy, Wanna Hold It?

Feminism taught me I’m allowed to take up space, and I don’t have to take shit from anyone, and that my thoughts and feelings and art matter. Understanding that I was worth more than whether or not cishet men found me fuckable, that I didn’t have to let my body define me, these were all things that helped me realize it was okay that I was trans, that I didn’t have to be what everyone wanted me to be because of how I looked.

And now these same friends and this same community that taught me so much, people I’ve fought for and with my whole life, are telling me to be quiet again when I worked so, so hard to be heard, and it’s exhausting and alienating and weird.

I’m not saying that misandry is real or that men as a Class are oppressed, but the failure to recognize that trans manhood is different from cis manhood and that it’s not as simple as, “You’re a man now, so I’m retroactively revoking your right to speak about your trauma,” is just… real transphobic and lame.

I don’t want to be in women’s spaces or take over women’s discussions; it isn’t about that. I mean shit like real life, actual friends, who have known me my whole life, telling me it’s not my place to talk about things like abortion and sexual assault, because they think having he/him in my social media bios somehow grants me the kind of privilege that cis men get.

And I know things will be more complicated than that when I start to pass or I’m treated as a man consistently somewhere other than the internet, but like.

Dude, it was less than a year ago that somebody doxxed me and threatened me with physical violence and called my house calling me the d-slur every day because I refused to send him pictures of my tits, and you really wanna tell me I that don’t know what it’s like to be harassed by cis men?

I don’t have a point to make, really, or a solution, but like…

Strangely enough in my particular situation I’ve become more comfortable talking to my cis men friends and family about my problems which was definitely not the case before. A couple of my close friends have been great, but as a whole I’ve had a ad time.

There’s a lot of messaging out there that trans women are real women and society is not to hold their prior biological sex assignment to them. We are to treat them as they are now, as the gender and sex they have claimed.

This og post seems, to me, to be saying the exact opposite should be done for trans men. It seems to be saying that society, and ciswomen specifically, should still accept the trans man as a woman because his prior experiences are not negated by the gender and sex he now claims.

That… that really doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

It seems as though trans men are upset that they’re being pushed out of women’s spaces after transitioning. But, like, what? Women’s spaces are for women. You’re a man now. You can advocate and support women’s spaces, but no you cannot be in and a part of them. Just like trans women aren’t a part of men’s spaces anymore.

Am I missing something here? Do trans women also expect to remain an accepted and loved member of men’s spaces? Because right now this just feels like another example of women not living up to unreasonable expectations.

First: it isn’t about access to women’s spaces, notice how OP literally said “I don’t want to be in women’s spaces”. It’s about being able to talk about sexism and the violence of the patriarchy as things that effect you personally.

But wait… don’t trans women also experience sexism and the violence of the patriarchy? Yes, yes they very much do.

But here’s the thing: when it comes to this, the experiences of trans men and trans women are not polar opposites. You can’t mirror every statement about trans women and apply it to trans men because that’s not how reality works. The patriarchy casts a wide net and targets anyone it sees as not man enough.

Got a womb? No reproductive rights for you no matter how you identify. Are you a trans woman? Well, no reproductive rights for you either.

Got a vagina? Then you’re a target for all kinds of sexual violence no matter how you identify. Are you a trans woman? Then you’re a target too.

Not a cis man? I guess you must suck at computers and science and cars because only cisgender men can be taken serious when speaking about this. And we certainly don’t have a job for you.

As you can see, sexism often targets cis women, trans women, trans men and non-binary people, basically anyone who isn’t a cisgender man.

Statistics prove what a lot of trans men are saying: Asked about recent experiences of sexual violence, trans men who are early in transition and transmasculine people who do not transition report equal or more experiences of sexual violence than cis women (while trans women report far more experience of sexual violence than both). We also see a decrease in things like job opportunities for trans men during transition. There is no instant privilege being handed out the moment they identify as men.

Some trans men reach a point in their transition where they are seen by society as male most of the time and they - as well as outside observers - can notice that privilege ticking up. Coworkers take them more seriously as they speak. Walking home at 4 AM doesn’t feel scary. They’ve acquired male privilege based on the condition that they never speak about being trans. Which is a nasty precarious situation a lot of the time. Often there is also the condition that trans men should over-perform masculinity (which unfortunately results in some trans men becoming really sexist jerks out of a survival attempt. which is BAD and should be shut down, but it still comes from a different place than the behavior of cis sexist jerks.)

It’s important that trans men recognize how their privilege works because ignoring it can result in a lot of really shitty behavior. Simple example: The IT guy comes to fix the computers at work and only wants to speak to you and not your female coworker. That’s sexism. You’re supposed to shut that guy down and tell them to respect your female coworker right fucking now. But if you don’t recognize that male privilege impacts you, you won’t act. So yeah, it’s important for trans men to recognize what male privilege they have. 

But when that is simplified to “you have all the male privilege the moment you identify as a man” or “your past experiences of violence under the patriarchy do not matter”, you deny a lot of how sexism really works, and the result can be violent as trans men lose the support system they had while very much still being a target of patriarchal violence.

Trans women often experience the violence of the patriarchy long before they identify themselves as women, as they grow up soaked in messages about how inferior women are and see the worst of misogyny as it manifests in men-only spaces. And when trans women start presenting femininity, the violence of the patriarchy follows immediately. No slow process for them. Sexism targets those it sees as ‘not man enough’ and as far as the patriarchy is concerned, trans women are the worst sort of ‘not-men’ because the existence of trans women exposes the fact that being born with a specific genital shape doesn’t make you a man and that there might even be something desirable about being a woman. That frightens cis men and untangles the patriarchy, so trans women get all the worst of sexism immediately.

But the experiences of trans men are not a polar opposite of that, they’re a different process in which sexism launches an extra intense assault against their person when they come out as trans and only slowly impacts them less during transition. And the potential trauma sexism has caused in their life endures.

So tl;dr:

You can’t mirror statements about trans women and apply them to trans men. They’re not opposite experiences.

The patriarchy targets violence at everyone is sees as not man enough, it’s an exclusion based system.

Myndarlegur

a lot of places have a culture that valorizes never sleeping and not eating right and not taking breaks and stuff like that. 

fuck that. I want like

look at how comfortable and well rested I am. I am well-nourished, I take bubble baths, and I have a good work-life balance. 

self-care has made me strong. has running yourself into the ground made you strong?

I will destroy you. and then I will have a pleasant lunch.

Twitter thread by user @felixmooreactor (Felix Moore)

The pretzel you have to contort yourself into to frame ‘autistic people act more morally than neurotypical people’ as a bad thing is truly mind-boggling.

[Title of the linked article: “Autistic People Care Too Much, Research Says”, the picture attached is of a hot pink knitted stuffed rabbit with a tiny donations jar  and text next to it that reads “Breaking news: Autistic people are too generous”.]

This kind of thinking is only possible if you start from a mindset of ‘if autistic people do it, it must be wrong’, which somehow gets you to the absolutely galaxy-brain take that it is…bad…to make moral choices at the expense of your own interests?? #ActuallyAutistic

Screenshot on the 2nd tweet of the thread:

Pathologizing Positive Human Traits “Because Autism”

The authors pathologize autistic participants for refusing to support a bad cause, essentially for not being as selfish as the non-autistic group:

“Here, we show that ASD individuals are more inflexible when following a moral rule even though an immoral action can benefit themselves, and suffer an undue concern about their ill-gotten gains and the moral cost.

- Hu et al. 2020″